an elite asshole's take on competitive exercise and the RX+ lifestyle. these views are endorsed by nobody, including the friends, family, coworkers, students, or bosses of armen, or even armen himself sometimes. suck it.

Pages

Wednesday, January 4, 2012

Your New Year's Resolutions (and Why You Should Just Give Up Now)

New Years Resolutions: I know you made some, you know you made them, and it's already time to let them go. "But, Armen, you're supposed to support me and my bullshit!" (I'm paraphrasing). Definitely not. Here's why you should just give up:

It's meaningless.

The New Year just marks the start of a new calendar and really isn't any different from any other day of the year. You may as well make Tuesday Resolutions or Second Saturday of the Month Resolutions. So assigning some sort of ultimate importance to an intrinsically arbitrary date only makes your resolutions even more meaningless.

Because we're all a bunch of meatheads, here's an easier way of thinking about this: 21-15-9 deadlifts and handstand pushups is not only a workout you'll never be able to beat me in, but it's also known as "Diane". Calling it Diane is a meaningless as calling this past Sunday "New Years Day". So if suddenly you meet a chick named Diane and think, "God, now I have to do handstands to get this girl on my jock", then you're mixing up the meaningless (Diane the workout) with the meaningful (introducing Diane the lady to your snatch technique).

It's definitely not going to happen.

Even if your resolutions meant anything, they're not going to happen anyway. When's the last time you saw anyone who's ever been successful at anything say "Oh, yea, I just made it my New Years Resolution and made it happen"? That's right: never. Successful people are driven by something deeper than some bullshit yearly, hungover promise to not be a fatass anymore. Look at Steve Jobs: the guy was driven to be successful by the knowledge that one day he was going to die. He didn't wake up at 5 PM on January 1st and think to himself "Well, Stevie, it's the New Year, so now's the time to revolutionize the world of music."

The bottom line is, successful people don't find their motivation from the day of the year. When the biggest reason you committed to Paleo is because the calendar went from 2011 to 2012, you're not gonna be able to say "no" when someone shoves red velvet pancakes in your face.

You're resolving to do things that aren't even that impressive.

Here's the truth: everything we do is insignificant because we're all just minuscule pieces of carbon on a piece of dust floating in a sea of emptiness in the middle of an ocean of nothing that goes on forever. With the big picture out of the way, the things you wanna do aren't even impressive on the small scale. So you wanna lose some weight? Great! It's really easy - step 1: think of what types of behavior make a person a fatass, step 2: remember all the times you did those same actions?, step 3: fucking stop. There you go, problem solved. If I can legitimately solve your problem in 3 steps, you're not aiming high enough.

You're not even ready to make it happen.

What if you're shooting for the stars? "I'm gonna win the 2012 CrossFit Games!" Hate to break it to you, but you're not going to anything of the sort. If you're just now starting to plan for the 2012 CrossFit Games, you're about 3 years behind the curve. Your 390 pound deadlift, 3:45 Fran, and 7 minute mile aren't going to get you anywhere near the Games this year. "But, Armen," you say, "I'm going to train in a gas mask and a weightvest in all my workouts! That's gotta count for something right?" It does count for something…it's proof that we need to implement a eugenics program.